Bounded Set vs. Centered Set Thinking

I've been doing a good deal of thinking around the idea of Bounded Set vs. Centered Set Thinking in relation to the missional church and in relation to what we are doing at Veritas. I first became aware of Bounded Set vs. Centered Set Thinking about 8 years ago (or so) when I was given the book that really changed a great deal in my life, and my trajectory in life. That book being The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch.

Bounded Set and Centered Set (and Fuzzy Set...though we won't cover that) Thinking was originally proposed around 25 years ago by Paul Hiebert, in relation to a new way of understanding social groupings. Hiebert wrote about this in his book, "Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues" but found new life in Frost and Hirsh's book as well as the book "Missional Church" edited by Darrell Guder.

So what is Bounded Set vs. Centered Thinking? Frost and Hirsch use an analogy of fences and wells. If you are a farmer with a 3 acre ranch so to speak, you can build a fence to keep your cattle in and other animals out. This would be a Bounded Set. But if you are a rancher say with a huge amount of land and acreage you wouldn't be able to build fences around your whole property. So instead of building fences, you dig wells. So it is then assumed that animals won't go too far away from the well, because their life literally depends on them not wandering too far away from their water source.

So what does this have to do with the Missional Church? Frost and Hirsh unpack it this way, "The attractional church is a bounded set. That is, it is a set of people clearly marked off from those who do not belong to it. Churches thus mark themselves in a variety of ways. Have a church membership roll is an obvious one. This mechanism determines who's in and who's out. The missional-incarnational church, though, is a centered set. This means that rather than drawing a border to determine who belongs and who doesn't, a centered set is defined by it's core values, and people are not seen as in or out, but as closer or further away from the center. In that sense, everyone is in and no one is out. Though some people are close to the center and others far from it, everyone is potentially part of the community in it's broadest sense."

So in other words, a centered set is about direction. Which way are you headed? Are you heading towards the center, the core values of the community, or are you heading away from them? It reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote, "[The] situation in the actual world is much more complicated than that. The world does not consist of 100% Christians and 100% non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name: some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand…. "

So putting pictures to words the bounded set and the centered set would look like this....

So the question then becomes what is the center of the centered set, or what should be the center. Here I go back to Frost and Hirsch, who I couldn't agree more with, when they say, "For us the center should be Jesus himself. The gospel is the central imperative for Christian mission. Since at the core of a centered set is Christ, a church should be concerned with fostering increasing closeness to Jesus in the lives of all those involved. We believe that a centered-set church must have a very clear set of beliefs, rooted in Christ and his teaching. This belief system must be nonnegotiable and strongly held to by the community closest to its center. A centered-set church is not concerned with artificial boundaries that bounded-set churches have traditionally added. In bounded-set churches all sorts of criteria are determined for the acceptance or rejection of prospective members (smoking, drinking alcohol, living together outside marriage, differing views on Christ's return). In a centered-set church it is recognized that we are all sinners, all struggling to be the best people we can be. But we also believe that the closer one gets to the center (Christ), the more Christlike one's behavior should become. Therefore core members of the church will exhibit the features of Christ's radical lifestyle (love, generosity, hospitality, forgiveness, mercy, peace, and more) and those who have just begun the journey toward Christ (and whose lives ay not exhibit such traits) are still seen as "belonging" No one is considered unworthy of belonging because they happen to be addicted to tobacco, or because they're not married to their live-in partner. Belonging is a key value. The growth toward the center of the set is the same as the process of discipleship."

While these ideas might be clear in theory (and in the drawings above) I am struggling for what it means for Veritas, as a missional community as well as what it looks like for our community. I have done some thinking that if it is about core values and Jesus at the center, it could look something like this, for Veritas.

These are just some of the thoughts that have been scrambling around in the mind the last few days. I would appreciate any thoughts, comments, questions, insights, etc.. regarding Bounded Sets and Centered Sets and moving just beyond theory to practical, on the ground, application of these ideas.

Surprised by Hope: The Hope of Salvation

Below is the text and the discussion questions from our 4th week of our Surprised by Hope series looking at the Hope of Salvation. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, insights, etc....

Today we continue our Lenten journey towards the cross, and then to the surprise of that first Easter morning. From the grief and pain to the joy and the hope.

Our theme this last 4 weeks have been Surprised by Hope. We have taken a look at the Hope for the world. Matt did a great job making us aware that the Kingdom of God isn’t just a not yet reality, but that it is a present reality as well. That we are to be people of hope right now, right here, right in the present. We then looked at the Hope of Heaven, and talked about the fact that heaven and earth overlap, and that Jesus is moving and working to make earth look more and more like heaven. And we are called to participate in that work as well. Last week we talked about the Hope of the Second Coming. We talked about the hope of the second coming means that he will come and set the world right, and return it back to the way that it was truly meant to be. Not come down, scoop us off this doomed planet, and destroy it, as so many think.

So today we are talking about the Hope of Salvation. We will be spending time taking a good look at what is Salvation, what it isn’t, what we are saved from, and more importantly what we are saved for. I almost hesitate in using the word saved due to the almost negative connotation that it brings up in a lot of us. Images of hellfire and brimstone, heavy handed evangelist yelling “Are you saved?”, and the images of the movie called Saved that came out a few years ago. But if we are really honest, we realize that this is a biblical term, and that we need to unpack it from its cultural context (or at least the evangelical, fundamentalist context). Once we do that we will, I believe, realize that Salvation is a more beautiful, more wonderful, and more hope filled reality, not only for the future but also for right now in the present.

To look at the idea of the hope of Salvation we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that many use to talk about grace and the fact that we can’t “earn salvation” but we are going to include the very next verse, which is often missing when people talk about grace and salvation, and use this particular text. The text that we’ll be looking at this morning is Ephesians 2:8-10 which says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

The Apostle Paul in the first two verses is saying that the hope of salvation is Jesus. It is about his work, his life, his death, and his resurrection. Salvation is a work of Jesus and a gift given to us. Nothing we do can earn it. We can’t be good enough; smart enough, love enough, and follow Jesus enough to somehow have God in our debt. Only through God’s grace, are we able to have the hope of salvation. Salvation, according to Paul, has to do with people being rescued from the fate that they would otherwise have incurred. It answers the question as to how that rescue has taken place and who is ultimately responsible for it.

But, to me, that begs a question. What exactly is this thing called Salvation. The common idea is that salvation is because Jesus died on the cross, so that we could go to heaven when we die. But I don’t believe that is the entire story. In fact I believe salvation is not “going to heaven” but “being raised in life in God’s new heaven and new earth.” And it is more than just a one time shot either. The work of salvation, that was done by Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, is much more than just about an end destination. In its fullest sense, salvation is about whole beings, and not merely souls, about the present, not simply the future, and about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.

It is pretty clear according to Paul that we aren’t saved by good works otherwise we would boast. But so often, people think that is the end of the story. That it ends at verse 9. Yes, it is quite clear that through the resurrection of Jesus, we are saved FROM sin and death. But there is more to salvation than just being saved from sin and death. God is saving and restoring all of creation (not just ourselves…..look at Colossians 1:20 which shows us what he saves by his death on the cross…”and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”) and he is inviting each of us into his work of sorting out what is wrong in the world. God’s people aren’t saved by good works, but we aren’t definitely saved for good works.

So often if we read verses 8-9 and stop there, so much of what salvation truly is gets lost, or can get lost. Some people believe that salvation is a one time deal, done by God and all we have to do is accept it. So we accept Jesus as Savior and not King and Lord. We walk down an aisle, say a prayer and we are in. And then we go on living anyway we want, because salvation is about being saved from Hell and for heaven, and we have already “sealed that deal.” This type of understanding of salvation castrates discipleship and mission. Why follow Jesus as a disciple, why partner with Jesus in the work of his Kingdom, if salvation is only about Jesus as Savior? All we have to do is look around at the state of the church today to realize that so many people have bought what the church has sold them, this understanding that salvation is just about me, my forgiveness, my eternity with God. We quote the first two verses, without the third verse, and we change the entire meaning of the gospel to being about us.

When we buy into, what Dallas Willard calls the gospel of sin management, that it is about the individual’s personal forgiveness of sins, we lose the true hope of salvation. We lose the power of the gospel. We lose how the gospel and salvation can make a difference, not only in our own individual lives, but our corporate life together, and also out into the entire world. We true lose that salvation is truly a gift from God, and that then we are to embody that gift of salvation, in our lives, and through our good works, the world can begin to look more and more like heaven.

You and I, when we are a vessel of the gospel, filled with God’s salvation, we are his masterpieces. We become a song, a dance, a painting, a photograph, a poem of the Kingdom of God. Our lives then point to the beauty, the hope, the redemption, the setting things to right that only God can fully do, but calls us into that work nonetheless, and the hope of salvation.

So yes, as I said before, Jesus offers salvation from sin, death, and the evil of this world. At the same time, his salvation is a call to something. We are saved from sin and for good works. Just as Jesus is sorting out the brokenness in our lives and the world, we are called to help him in his work of putting things right in our lives, society, and even in the created order. God is not perched off on some heavenly throne, sitting on his hands and waiting to battle evil and sort out the wrong in the world at some future time. He is entering human history each and every day through you and me. Salvation and judgment are coming today as we lock horns with evil, battle against sin, and become agents of God’s new creation right where he places us.

But what does this hope of salvation look like on the ground? What does it mean for you and I each and every day as we wake up go to work, to school, as we interact with friends, family, neighbors, etc…? How are you and I called to be masterpieces of his salvation and Kingdom in this world? Let’s talk about these very things together…..

1. As you reflect on the Scripture text and the message this morning, what thoughts, questions, insights, ideas, etc.. come to mind that you would like to share with the community? 2. How are we being and how can we be songs, dances, paintings, poems, photographs pointing to the hope of salvation in Jesus both individually and corporately? 3. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

Veritas: A Vision for Lancaster

The below video is a video that Chris Tress, a member of our community, put together to share the vision of Veritas as well as what God is doing in and through our community. Take a look at it and feel free to share it with others.

Surprised by Hope: Hope of the Second Coming of Jesus

Below is the text from the message from yesterday and the discussion questions that guide our conversation following the message. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, questions, push back, etc...

We are on our 3rd week of a 6 week series (over the course of 7 weeks….Palm Sunday March 24 we will take a week off from our series and participate in what we call The Table which is a simple meal, feet washing, and communion) entitled Surprised by Hope, which we are taking from the book by the same name by English Theologian NT Wright. And I would definitely encourage you that if you have a chance to read the book, do so. I read it and was deeply moved and challenged and now Kaytee has my copy. So either pick it up at a bookstore, on Amazon, library, or bug Kaytee to let you read it.

Over the course of these 6 weeks we are immersing ourselves in Hope. 2 weeks ago we covered the Hope for the World, and Matt lead us into discovering what the Hope of a Christian was. That it isn’t about escaping this world and going to the next, but that it is about the Kingdom of God and the rule and reign of Jesus in our lives and in the world.

Last week we talked about the Hope of Heaven and that Heaven and Earth are overlapping realities, which overlapped in Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection. And that the gospel isn’t the story of taking earth to heaven when we die, but bring heaven to earth while we live.

This week we are covering The Hope of Jesus’ Second Coming. And this is a tricky conversation to have. So many people have ideas and theories about the “end of the world.” And they hold tightly to that theory. And so many people try to come up with dates, time lines, etc… But I don’t really want to come up with timelines, etc… Because you see I really believe that all Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist. I do want to say this about the second coming before we jump into the Scriptures for the morning. The second coming of Jesus (along with the ascension) are vital Christian doctrines, because if you don’t hold to the belief in them, we have not rounded out the whole Kingdom of God’s theology.

So let’s look at 2 different Scriptures this morning and see how they might shed light on the Hope of the Second Coming and what that might say for us today for how we live our lives in our postmodern, ever-increasingly Post-Christendom world.

So the first Scripture we’ll be looking at is Acts 1:9-11, which says, “After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Here we see Jesus gathering his disciples, giving them last minute encouragement, and the “game plan” to make disciples, and then ascending into heaven. And so Jesus is lifted up, indicting to the disciples not that he was heading out somewhere beyond the moon, beyond Mars, or whatever, but that he was going into God’s space, God’s dimension.” And so Jesus ascends into heaven and the disciples are all looking up into the sky when two angels drop the bomb that Jesus will come back in the same way that they saw him go into heaven. Jesus, having gone into God’s dimension of reality, will one day be back. Be back on the day that God’s dimension and our present one are brought together once and for all. That promise hangs in the air over the whole of Christian history from that day to today. This is what we mean by the second coming. It isn’t about God sweeping down and scooping up his people to rescue us from a dying planet. Rather, it is about Jesus returning to redeem the earth, heal his people, sort out all that is wrong, and reign in glory. And so you and I, the church, and all of creation awaits the return of Jesus and the final consummation of his work here on earth.

But there are two other things that are happening in this text, with connections to the Old Testament and to the culture of the 1st century that many, if not all, of Luke’s readers and hearers would immediately pick up on that many of us in the 21st century would totally miss out on. One of these connections would again show to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, Anointed One, Savior while the other connection would be to show that Jesus was true King, and that he came to subvert the current understanding that there were other sons of God’s, King’s, etc.. who we call Caesar.

One of the central OT promises for the early Christians was in Daniel 7:13-14 which says, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” For those who would have spent lots of time pondering this text, as the early Christians would have, the story of the ascension of Jesus indicate that Daniel 7 was fulfilled in Jesus.

Secondly, many of Luke’s readers would know that when a Roman Emperor died, it had become customary to declare that someone had seen his soul escaping from his body and going up to heaven. The message of this is clear; the emperor was becoming a god, thus enabling his son and heir to label himself as the son of god. The parallel is not that close, this time since it wasn’t Jesus soul that ascended into heaven, but his whole, renewed, bodily, and complete self. But what is really cool… is this. It is almost as if, Jesus is upstaging anything the Roman emperors might imagine for themselves. Jesus is the reality and the emperors are the parody. Not the other way around.

And so you might ask, what does all this have to do with the second coming? A few things. First, we see that Jesus is to come again in the same way that he ascended. Which means returning again in a whole, renewed, bodily, resurrected and completed self. Also just like the early disciples who were tempted to stare off into heaven, and were questioned by the angels, so can we be questioned. We aren’t to peer up into the sky wondering when Jesus will arrive. We are not to create fanciful scenarios about how Jesus will come. Instead, we are to invest our energy and time in caring for his creation, loving each other, sharing his grace, seeking justice, celebrating beauty, and living with confidence that Jesus will return one day. Until that final consummation, we live each day with a profound awareness that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Which brings us to our next Scripture which fits perfectly in the discussion of the final consummation and the fact that the consummation will show that Jesus is truly King of Kings and Lord of Lord’s. The next Scripture that we’ll unpack a little bit together is Philippians 3:20-21 which says, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

The first thing we see is this idea that we are citizens of heaven. This doesn’t mean that our true home is in heaven and we are just waiting around until the day we die so that we can go there. To properly understand this idea we need to understand the 1st century and what it meant to be a citizen of a country (or empire), mostly the Roman Empire. The task of a Roman citizen, who didn’t live in the city of Rome, but in another colony of Rome, say Philippi for instance (since we are reading out of Philippians) was to bring Roman culture and rule to Philippi and to expand Roman influence there. And if a Roman colony, like Philippi were under attack, the emperor himself, often called Savior or Rescuer, would come from Rome to change the situation, defeat the enemies and establish the colony as firmly and gloriously as Rome itself. This is the exact picture of Philippians 3:20-21. The church is at present a colony of heaven, with responsibility for bring the life and rule of heaven to bear on earth. Our hope then is that the true Savior, the true Lord, King Jesus himself will come from heaven and change everything. He is going to transform the entire world so it is full of his glory, full of the life and power of heaven. And so the hope of the second coming is based on the biblical confidence that Jesus will 1 day return to this world, restore creation, heal his people and make all things new. So what does that mean for you and me today in the way we live as individuals and as a community of Jesus followers? How does or should the hope of the second coming affect the way we live today? Let’s spend some time talking about how we apply these Scriptures to our lives today in the 21st century.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc.. do you have regarding the message and the Scriptures? 2. How can you and I live as citizens of heaven individually and as a colony of heaven corporately? Give me some concrete examples and ideas 3. What is God saying to you? What are you going to do about it? 4. What do you think God is saying to us? What should we do about it?

Surprised by Hope: The Hope of Heaven

Below is the message from yesterday's gathering along with the discussion questions that took place following the message. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc.....

Last week we began a six week series entitled Surprised by Hope, based off of the book of the same name by English Theological powerhouse N.T. Wright. Over the course of the 6 weeks we will be or have looked at issues like the Christian’s hope, the hope of heaven, the second coming of Jesus, salvation, the church, it’s mission and finally leading up to Easter Sunday with the Hope of Resurrection.

Last week Matt walked us through Surprised by Hope: Hope for the world. He looked at what the hope of the Christian really is. That the hope of the Christian isn’t about escaping this place and going to the next place. It is ultimately about the Kingdom of God and his rule and reign in our lives and in this world.

Today, I am going to follow that up, by talking about the Hope of Heaven. And I want to start our discussion with a question and than a statement that I want to make, that I want you to think deeply about before jumping to any conclusions about that statement.

The question that I want to pose this morning to you is this…what comes to mind when you think of heaven? (Short time of discussion)

And here is the statement. The point of Christianity isn’t “to go to heaven when you die.” Now let that sink in awhile. Let’s look at some Scripture and see what the NT says about the hope of heaven and what heaven is like. Hopefully we’ll come to the point and see that the gospel is not a story of taking earth to heaven when we die. But that it is about bringing heaven to earth as we live.

Let’s revisit a passage of Scripture that we talked about a few short weeks ago, when we were talking about the Lord’s Prayer, that being Matthew 6:10 which says, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What does this Scripture say to us about the hope of heaven?

Before we get too much into that, we need to look at the 3 most prevailing understandings of how God and the world are related that will help us to see what the hope of heaven is really all about.

Option 1 is that God and the world are basically the same thing already overlapping more or less entirely. The Pantheist seeks to get in touch or in tune with the divine impulse present within the world and within oneself.

Option 2 is that God and the world are a long way apart from one another. This is best expressed by Deist who believe God doesn’t interact with the world, that the world is a closed system.

Option 3 and the biblical one (even though many American Christians essentially live their lives more under the option 2 reality) is that God and the world are different from one another but not far apart. There were and are ways in which, moments at which, and events through which heaven and earth overlap and interlock.

I believe, all too often, in our American and western mindset, we tend to box, separate, divide and keep things apart that aren’t really separated. We tend to think earth is here, and heaven is exclusively another reality, another place, and another time. But the early Christians didn’t think that way. Heaven is not a far away place we hope to go to some day. Through Christ it is very near, it is the control room of earth, and as we follow Jesus, the reality of heaven comes alive in us and is unleashed through us. Heaven and earth are overlapping realities and the resurrection of Jesus has connected these two spheres more closely than we know.

Just look at what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 1:7-10, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” What the Apostle Paul is getting at is that Jesus is the ultimate place where heaven and earth meet. Paul is telling us the story of the cross of Jesus in such a way that we can hear, underneath it, the ancient Jewish story of the Passover. Passover was the night when the angel of death came through the land of Egypt and the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the door posts rescued the Israelites from the judgment that would otherwise have fallen on them. True redemption has occurred. Forgiveness of sins is the real deliverance from the real slavemaster. And it’s been accomplished through the sacrificial blood of Jesus.

The last verse of Ephesians 1:7-10 continues the New Testament references which pick up from the Old Testament that God intends, in the end, to put the whole creation to rights. Earth and heaven were made to overlap with one another, not partially as they do at the moment (one only has to look at the newspaper each day to realize that earth and heaven don’t completely overlap yet), but completely. Jesus started the process of bringing the two realities of heaven and earth back into totally alignment, he calls for us to continue the process, and ultimately, as Ephesians 1:10 says, “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” Or as an old hymn says, “This is my Father's world, The battle is not done; Jesus who died shall be satisfied, And earth and heaven be one.”

Going back to the verse that we started with, Matthew 6:10, we can see this reality that heaven and earth are meant to overlap, even now, and more fully when all shall be resurrection, renewed, and redeemed. God who dwells in “heaven” and longs to see his sovereign and saving rule come to birth ‘on earth.” This is, in fact, a prayer for the Kingdom of God to become fully present and not for God’s people to be snatched away from earth to heaven, but for the glory and beauty of heaven to be turned into earthly reality as well.

Listen, I am not downplaying the reality of heaven after you die. I believe in a heaven that is outside our reality, but it isn’t just somewhere else, for sometime else, but that it is also for here, and now. Just like the Kingdom of God, there is a now and not yet part of heaven. Heaven is now and designed to be experiencing now, and at the same time not yet. Heaven is breaking into our present circumstance with each passing moment. And if we look and pay close attention we will see that heaven and earth are overlapping and 1 of the ways that that happens, is through God’s people who not only pray, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” but live out a heaven-infused reality right now, right where we live. So the hope of heaven is not something we are waiting for, but it is what we enter each day as we follow Jesus and let his heavenly plan unfold in and through each one of us, and through communities such as ours.

But what does this concretely look like? What does it mean that heaven and earth overlap and interlock? What does it look like when heaven and earth overlap and interlock? What does it mean for you and me and our community to live a heaven-infused reality right now? And what implications are there for us and communities of faith everywhere if heaven and earth truly overlap? These are the questions that we’ll be spending the rest of our time today talking about and unpacking together.

1. What thoughts, comments, questions, insights, etc.. do you have regarding the Scriptures and the message? 2. Share with us a story of a time where you saw or experienced heaven and earth overlapping and interlocking. 3. What does it look like for you and I to live a heaven-infused reality right now? What does it look like for our community to live a heaven-infused reality right now? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

Surprised by Hope: Hope for the World

At Veritas this past Sunday we started our new series entitled "Surprised by Hope" based off of the book by the same name by N.T. Wright. My family and I were away on vacation, so Matt Wheeler shared instead. Below are his notes/outline. Take some time and read his notes and we'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc....

“Surprised By Hope: Hope For The World”

• New series inspired by British bishop N.T. Wright’s book Surprised By Hope. • Quote from N.T. Wright: • “Most people, in my experience—including Christians—don’t know what the ultimate Christian hope really is. Most people—again, sadly, including many Christians—don’t Christians to have much to say about hope within the present world. Most people don’t imagine that these two could have anything to do with each other. Hence the title of this study: hope comes as a surprise, at several levels at once.” • ? – What is the ultimate Christian hope? o Going to Heaven o Resurrection o How does it relate to life now? • ? – Name some world events that have made people lose hope. o 9/11 o Indian Ocean Tsunami o Newtown • These events beg the question – “In what should we hope?” • Two approaches that “go astray” o The “Secret Code” approach o The “Escape the World” approach • In a Hebrew context, “judging the world”—with righteousness & truth—means putting things right & bringing justice, not condemnation on the earth itself. • Psalm 96:13 • Isaiah 11:1-9 • What things look like when God is in charge • Revelation 21:1-5 • God isn’t tossing the world in a “celestial trash bin”—He makes Heaven & earth new & brings New Jerusalem down to earth. • Jesus teaches us not how to leave earth, but how to bring the Kindgom of Heaven. • ? – What does the word “kingdom” mean to you? • Kingdom=God running the show. Jesus describes what this is like in parables, such as the parable of the seeds & the prodigal son. • God sorts things out; Jesus started it moving on earth. • Christians=people who help make that hope happen. • Jewish & pagan rulers were shocked—they were being called to account. • Romans 15:13—Paul’s letters speak of hope. • Christ-followers—the church—a people of hope. • Hoping in God, hope for the world • Things can be put right. God will do it. That is the reason for hope despite pain & injustice. There are things we can do.

Disarming our World: The Lord's Prayer Week 6

We have come to the end of our Lord's Prayer series and below is the text for the message from yesterday along with the questions for discussion. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, etc.. about the message, the Scripture and the conversation that followed.

So we have finally come to the end of our six week series on the Lord’s Prayer. This amazing, upside-down, Kingdom prayer which we have many times called The Disciple’s Prayer, because it gives us such a picture of what following Jesus and being part of the Kingdom of God is all about.

These past weeks for me have been challenging, encouraging, convicting, and seem to be right where I’ve been living. I pray that you have felt the same thing and that through this experience your discipleship and following Jesus has taken another step.

But today we are wrapping up the Lord’s Prayer and this part of the Lord’s Prayer is no less radical, subversive, and counter-cultural than any of the others that we looked at. But the interesting thing about this part of the prayer is that it isn’t found in our reading of the text this morning. This part however does show up in later manuscripts and is wholly consistent with how many Jewish people would close their prayers during Jesus day and before. In fact this part of the prayer might be a rewording of 1 Chronicles 29:10-13 which says, “ David praised the LORD in the presence of the whole assembly, saying, “Praise be to you, LORD, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name.”

So while we don’t read it in our text this morning, we normally close the Lord’s Prayer with these words, “for yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” This closing affirmation isn’t about us, about our ministry accomplishments or our spiritual maturity. It is about HIS Kingdom, HIS Power, and above all else HIS glory. So we come full circle. The Lord’s Prayer begins and ends with God’s goodness and greatness, affirming the centrality of his Kingdom, and his will over all things.

Now the ending of the prayer, as I mentioned, is as radical and counter cultural as all the other words. But I also believe this part of the prayer is very very subversive and would have been seen that way to Jesus’ hearers. You see Declaring God’s Kingdom, power and glory was a direct affront to the Roman emperor. The language of Kingdom, power, and glory were to be used for the self-proclaimed god-King of the empire. This part of the prayer is not only a declaration of devotion to God, but a subversive rejection of authority of this world. We are to denounce the authority of the empires of the world that demand our allegiance, whether that be individualism, materialism, nationalism, or something else. But we aren’t to be subversive just for the sake of being subversive. Not, our subversion of the empire is a by-product of our obediently following Jesus as the one and only Lord and King, to whom we swear our absolute allegiance.

Now the amazing thing about this declaration that we say at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, that it is about God’s Kingdom, His power, and His glory is in relation to the words Kingdom, power, and glory and how one (one person, one nation, etc..) would go about having a Kingdom, the power, and the glory. You see, in Jesus day, and our day as well (even though we really don’t have Kingdom’s per se) one obtains these things normally through violence, top down power, and threats of more punishment. But Jesus however took another route when it came to Kingdom, power and glory, the path not won through violence, pain, and power (or at least not to others, but having it done to him). Think about it. The Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, was not brought about by peace and love and justice. No, the Pax Romana was a peace made possible by the cross: people so feared crucifixion that they would think long and hard before rising up against the emperor. So the Kingdom (or empire), the power, and the glory for the Roman Empire came through doling out violence, especially using the cross. The Pax Christi (the peace of Christ), the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, came not through the peace of conquest but of true reconciliation. The King achieves peace not by shedding the blood of rebels, but by- and I hope you hear the scandal and wonder of this in the midst of familiar words- shedding his own blood. Jesus Kingdom, power and glory came through the cross. The Apostle Paul in Colossians 2:12-15 puts it this way, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” The cross, an instrument of torture, pain, and death became an instrument of peace, reconciliation, defeat and life. Not only did the cross bring about forgiveness of our sins- “canceled the charge of legal indebtness” (sounds connected to the Lord’s prayer- Forgive us our debts….) but also brought about the defeat of sin, death and evil and has brought forth the Kingdom. What seemed like the biggest, most crushing defeat in the world became the biggest, most astonishing win in the world. Jesus disarmed the powers and authorities, not by physically resorting to the same violence that they had inflicted upon him, not by buying into the myth of redemptive violence, but by triumphing over them by their own instrument of violence and death. Talk about a reversal of fortune.

You see the rulers and authorities of Rome and Israel, the best government and the highest religion of the world of that time had ever known- conspired to place Jesus on the cross. These powers, angry at his challenge to their sovereignty, stripped him naked, held him up to public contempt and celebrated a triumph over him. In one of his most dramatic statements of the paradox of the cross, and one moreover which shows what physical detail could envisage the horrible death Jesus had died, he declares that on the contrary, on the cross God was stripping them naked, was holding them to public contempt, and leading them in his own triumphal procession- in Christ, the crucified Messiah.

Our world tells us that if you want to build your Kingdom, be powerful, and have all the glory that you need to put yourself first, step on the back of others to get up in the world, when someone slaps you in the face, you hit them back, that you need money because money=power, that it is all about you. Jesus, and his upside down Kingdom, as we have been learning over the last six weeks tells us that it is about God the Father, His Kingdom (on earth as it is in heaven), about his provisions for us (and not trying to do it ourselves), about forgiveness and not grudges, about not giving into temptation, and most of all, that the Kingdom is primary not about ourselves, our ideas, our power, our glory. Most of all the life of a discipleship of Jesus, means that the Kingdom, the power and the glory is all about Jesus. And that the Kingdom, the power and the glory came through the upside down way of the cross.

But what does all this talk about Kingdom, power, glory and the upside down way of the cross, have to do with each of us gathered here today? What does it say to our community about how we do life and engage in our world around us? These are the very things that we are going to take time to discuss together.

1. What thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc... do you have regarding the Scriptures and the message? 2. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it? 3. What take away are you taking away from our 6 week series on the Lord's Prayer?

Escaping Temptation Island: Week 5 Lord's Prayer

Below is the text from our 5th week looking at the Lord's Prayer. Feel free to respond, engage, ask questions, and push back after you read it. Also below the text of the message is the questions that we dialogued around following the message.

This week marks our 5th week in our 6 week series looking at the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13. This prayer, which probably should be better entitled The Disciple’s Prayer as I believe it is a prayer that encompasses much of what it means to be a disciple and to live out the Upside Down Kingdom of God.

Over the last 4 weeks we have looked at such Kingdom issues as the Fatherhood of God, being Adopted as sons and daughter’s of God, dreaming about what it would be like if heaven touched down on earth, God’s provision for us, and through us, and forgiveness (from God, towards each other, and in relation to the word Debt and Debtors).

Today we cover Matthew 6:13. Let’s look at the entire prayer and then zero in on verse 13. “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ It is the last part, “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one” that we’ll be looking at together this morning by using this verse and also Luke 4:1-13. The first thing that should catch our attention is the same thing that stood out to us when we looked at verse 11 and 12, the usage of the word us. As I mentioned before, the concept of the individual is a modern understanding. The Hebraic worldview, of which the Bible is a part, doesn’t have the understanding of the individual as we do. In fact, most of the usages of the word “you” in the Bible are in the plural form and actually refer to “you all,” as in the corporate church family. The fact is that the ancient culture in which the Bible was written tended to think collectively rather than individually. They thought first in groups of people and community rather than in individual terms.

So this prayer, as I mentioned before, is not so much an individual prayer as it is a communal prayer that the community of follower’s of Jesus need to be praying, and living together. Secondly, we have to understand what is meant by temptation. It literally means a test, and not always a solicitation to do evil. God has promised to keep us from any testing that is greater than what we can handle (1 Cor. 10:13). In fact, tradition throughout early Christianity is that testing of one’s faith is a necessary part of discipleship. In fact Jesus whole public “career” was marked by trials of one sort or another. So what Jesus is doing in this prayer, is inviting us to share his own struggles and to experience the same deep of faith that sustained him. You see there is an intimate connection between this part of the prayer, and the ministry of Jesus. With the prayer about deliverance from temptation and the evil one of Matthew 6:13 we are back again with Jesus. Immediately we think of the temptation narratives of Matthew 4:1-11, and Luke 4:1-13, as well as the scene at Gethsemane. We see in those other stories Jesus praying this part of the Lord ’s Prayer to be lead out of temptation, and delivered from evil.

In fact there is a deep connection that I found between the Lord’s Prayer, the subjects that that have been dealing with each week and the story of the temptation of Jesus found in Luke 4:1-13. Let’s go to Luke 4:1-13, read the narrative, and see where the temptations that Jesus faced are the temptations that we face, and how the Lord’s Prayer speaks directly to those temptations. “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’” The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.” So the first temptation that we find in this text is the temptation to turn stones into bread. Jesus, being hungry, after not eating for 40 days, was surely starving, and Satan knew that. This is why he went that route first. But what is Satan really tempting Jesus with? Is it just to turn stones to bread, or to just eat? Is there more to it? I believe the temptation is the temptation to become our own provider, our own Father if you will. To base our identity in our own power, provision, and position instead of, as we talked about the first week, upon our status as an adoption son or daughter of our heavenly father. And there in lies the connection. Satan wanted Jesus to provide food for himself, and not trust in the provision that God had for him. Satan wanted to have Jesus pray, “I’ll give myself this day my daily bread”, as he wants all of us to pray that. But Jesus was rooted in the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus knew that ultimate provision (and not just in relation to bread, but also in temptation and strength) comes from the hand of God the Father and not from the self. The second temptation that Satan tested Jesus with was in relation to Jesus giving worship, rule and reign to Satan. Satan says, ““I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” What is Satan tempting Jesus with? With being King, and ruling and reigning over the earth, by not going to the Cross, and putting Satan before God the Father. If Jesus would have fallen for that temptation, his prayer later wouldn’t have been, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It would have been the Kingdom of Satan and not the Kingdom of God if Jesus would have worshipped him. It would have been on earth as it is in hell. No, the rule and reign of Jesus had to go through the temptation, and the trials, and all the way to the cross. Not circuited by worshipping Satan. The last temptation that Jesus had to endure, in this narrative, is the temptation to not trust God’s protection. And in this temptation Satan is smart, and even uses Scripture, to get Jesus to not trust in his heavenly Father. Satan tells him to throw himself off the temple, because after all Scripture does say, “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ And this gets at the heart of two parts of the Lords’ prayer, the very beginning, “Our Father who art in heaven.” And the part that we are looking today, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.” Jesus needed to trust his Heavenly Father and have the strength through His Heavenly Father (and the word of God) to ward off the evil one and the temptation to test the love of His Father. When we look at the root of these temptations that Jesus faced, we notice something about them. It isn’t something that just Jesus faced. No these temptations strike at the heart of what it means to be fully human (as Jesus was). These temptation strike at the heart of what we have been praying together this entire series. Our temptations are no different than Jesus’ temptations. I believe, but I can’t prove it that the words in the Lord’s Prayer came because of his testing in the wilderness as they directly speak to the temptations. You see we all struggle with the temptation to be our own Father, so to speak. To base our Identity and self preservation on ourselves, our power, our wisdom, our positions, instead of praying, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Secondly, we don’t want to live under the rule and reign of Jesus and his Kingdom. We want to live under the rule and reign of King Me. We want to pray “My kingdom come, my will be done.” We want to worship ourselves, instead of worshipping the true King, King Jesus. When we pray, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” it is directly confronting the very issue of whose rule and reign are we living under, our own (and by definition, the evil ones) or under the rule and reign of Jesus. Pray that part of the Lord’s Prayer means calling Jesus not only savior but also King and Lord. Thirdly, when we pray “Give us this day our daily bread” we are directly confronting the temptation to provide for ourselves, and think we can do it all. That we are in control. That we don’t need anyone else whether than anyone else is God or even other people. We want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and make it on our own. Life in the Kingdom of God, and in living out the prayer means trusting that God will give you your daily bread, and also means that he trusts you to also provide that daily bread for other people. So in the Lord’s Prayer we see Jesus directly confronting the struggles and temptations that all humans, including him, face. And in the Lord’s Prayer he has given us words to use to confront the evil one when we are tempted. But what does this mean when the rubber hits the road? What can we learn and apply to our lives about escaping from temptation island through the Lord’s Prayer and the Temptation of Christ in the wilderness? Let’s spend sometime unpacking these stories and their relevance and application to our lives for the next few minutes.

1. What insights, questions, comments, push back, etc.. do you have regarding the Scriptures and the message? 2. What other connections do you see between the Lord’s Prayer, the Tempation of Christ and our own temptations? 3. In what ways, and how, can you resist temptation when it comes? Is there something in the Lord’s Prayer that can help? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us as a community and what should we do about it?

Jesus: A Theography

So a few months ago I received the book "Jesus: A Theography" by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola to review through the blogging program booksneeze. Normally it doesn't take me 4 months to review a book, but due to a combination of busyness, holidays, and the depth (and length) of the book, I am finally getting around to reviewing this book.

The first thing you need to know is just what a theography is. A Theogrpahy is basically the combination between the words Theology and Biography. It can be defined as writing about God. Or a Theological Biography. And in the case of this book a Theological Biography of Jesus and reading Scripture through the lens of Jesus and finding Jesus in both the 1st and 2nd Testaments (words that the authors use instead of Old and New Testament.)

According to the authors, their purpose in writing this book is that, "the Bible is the narrative of Jesus- the Christ, the Savior, the living Lord, and our All. On every page of the First Testament, God poured out his heart. He bled with his people long and hard before He entered earth through the womb of a young virgin girl in Bethlehem."

The book helped me to see the author's premise that the Bible,from beginning to end, is the story of creation, revelation, redemption, and consummation and that Christ is present in every word, every book, and every narrative. Even in sections that I struggle with understanding or struggle to fit into my theology, that Jesus is working this overarching redemptive narrative.

Even the way that the author's structure their chapters pushed their premise of Christ in the Old and New Testament. They started with Christ before time, than Christ in Creation (both in Macro and Micro), and then entering into the stories and narratives of the New Testament including his birth, his boyhood, the missing years, and into his ministry years of healing, teaching, and finally his death, and resurrection.

I would probably say that the most helpful part of the book for me dealt with Chapter 14 entitled, "The Atonement and the Harrowing of Hell." and how it helped me to again understand, in some small way, what took place that fateful day over 2,000 years ago when Jesus hung on the cross. It helped me to see that our human theories of atonement (cristus victor, penal substitution, ransom, non-violent, etc...) all have some basis in Scripture but in the end they all come up short in fully explaining the cross and Jesus death on the cross for all of humanity. Or as the author's put it, "Because the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary is too enormous in its scope and too rich in its meaning to be captured by a single image or definition."

I would say that overall, while this book is a long read, and took me some time to wade through, overall I am glad that I did. It helped me to wrestle with Jesus in the books of the Old Testament, with the overarching narrative of redemption that God started even before time, and will bring into consummation when he remakes heaven and earth (and all those who call on his name). It helped me to reframe the way that I see the Bible, not as a series of books held together by glue and binding, but a series of books held together by Jesus, his redemptive narrative, and his blood.

The Real F Word: The Lord's Prayer Week 4

Below is the text from this past Sunday's worship gathering dealing with the 4th part of the Lord's Prayer along with the questions that we discussed. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, insights, etc..

Today we continue our 6 week series looking at the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13. Or as an author has said that we should call the Lord’s Prayer, the Disciple’s Prayer, due to its significance and what it teaches in respect to being followers of Jesus Christ.

We started 3 weeks ago with the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning (which is a really good place to start). We started with Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We spent time talking about the struggle that some of us have in praying to God the Father, due to our struggle with our earthly Father’s. We also talked about the beautiful fact that we are adopted as sons and daughters of God the Father, and how he has redeemed our past, and give us an inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

Two weeks ago we covered the next part of the prayer “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We talked about the idea of what it would look like if heaven touched down on earth, and the fact that heaven did touch down on earth 2,000 years ago with the person, work, ministry, and mission of Jesus. We also talked about the mission of Jesus found in Luke 4 and talked about that it was his mission, that by definition, if we are followers of Jesus, it should be our mission as well. Things like preaching good news to the poor, setting the oppressed free, proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Last week we talked about the third part, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We talked about the communal nature of this prayer, and that we can be the answer to this part of the prayer for others who need their daily bread, especially when we have 365 daily breads all ready stored up for ourselves. We talked about God’s provision that happens daily whether that would be food, or encouragement, or whatever sustenance that can get us through.

Today we cover the next part of this radical, Kingdom of God, upside down, prayer. The part that says, “Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.” So let’s look again at the prayer and then we’ll unpack it together using a parable that Jesus told that I believe connects nicely to this part of the prayer. Matthew 6:9-13 says, ““This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

So the first thing that I noticed about this part of the prayer is the usage of the word debt and the word debtor. In the Lukan account in chapter 11 we see Luke rending the prayer, “Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” So right there we notice a tension between the two texts. But I believe this goes to show the fact, that as we learned and talked about every week of this series that try as you might you can’t separate spiritual needs from material needs.

In fact all 3 Aramaic versions of this text, Jesus uses the Aramaic words Khuba, which means both material debt and sin. Jesus knew how all-consuming financial debt was for people. Debt, in Jesus time, could land a person in indentured servitude or even prison. When people become slaves to debt, they forfeit their freedom and will. Jesus also knows that sin, can also be all consuming. When we become slaves to sin, we end up as indentured slaves and in prison and when we become slaves to sin; we forfeit our freedom and will. The bondage of sin and material debt limits our ability to be faithful and submitted servants of God. This just goes to show again that our physical conditions and situations impact our spiritual conditions and situations. That you can’t separate the flesh from the spirit, even though many others in the past and even now try to. I wonder if we have so easily resorted to the words trespasses and sins instead of the word debt and debtors because it is easier to talk about my own sins and God’s forgiveness instead of talking about the idea of physical debt. Plus if taken this way, this text becomes exceedingly countercultural and super radical. More radical than we realize.

What if and this is a what if. What if this text means that we are literally to forgive people’s material debts? And trust that God will provide for us and the ones we forgive. What if Jesus, in this text, is calling communities of Christ followers to work to help each other get freed from debt? Be freed from the bondage and enslavement to Money. What would it be like if the Christian community would literally help someone get out of material debt (and help them stay out of it) by using the pulled resources of the Christian community? If this is true, then he is calling his people to live counter culturally. To do otherwise in this respect is not only an act of disobedience but an active step into the very bondage that robs us of our freedom to live obediently. To forgive people their debts frees people to live with that same single-minded devotion to God, which would otherwise be compromised.

Another thing I noticed was it’s placement in the prayer, right after the commitment to trust God with the daily bread that he gives to us. This statement, “Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors” is first and foremost a declaration of our absolute dependence on God’s grace and forgiveness, daily and ultimately. Further, it is a reminder that our forgiveness is entirely undeserved, extended to us before (or whether) we asked for it. Therefore, for us to expect the gracious forgiveness of God while holding back forgiveness from others is absolutely unacceptable to God. Jesus goes so far as to say that forgiveness for our own sins is contingent on our extending entirely undeserved forgiveness to those who have wronged us, before (or whether) they ask for it. In fact Jesus tells a story that helps to unpack this idea of forgiveness of debts and sins. That story can be found in Matthew 18:21-35.

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

So in this text we see the connection that Jesus makes between debts, forgiveness, and sin. He tells this story, which while it was a parable; no doubt it was played out many times through Israel in the first century (as far as debts). Peter comes to Jesus and asks him how many times he should forgive someone who sin against him. We don’t know if Peter had someone in mind who had wronged him, and if he wanted to have an excuse to not forgive this person. And so that begins the story that Jesus uses to show Peter (and us) that our debtedness and forgiveness is intrinsically linked to our forgiveness of others debts that they owe us. That story is what we call the Parable of the unmerciful servant.

What we see in this parable is the story of a servant of the king who had a 10,000 bag of gold debt to be paid to the King. He couldn’t pay the debt no matter how much he promised. It clearly represents an unpayable debt. So he begs for forgiveness and also for patience from the King, and the King compassionately and mercifully wipes away this servant’s debt. But apparently this act of grace, mercy, and forgiveness shown to the servant from the King didn’t have a huge, lasting impact on the servant as you think it would. No, instead the servant turns around, finds another servant that owes him a fraction of what he owed the King, and proceeds to try to beat it out of him. The other servant has the exact same plead that was used by the servant with the greater debt, but to no avail. Instead he threw the man into prison until the debt could be paid. Well of course, if you were witness to this lack of mercy from someone who received even greater mercy, you would be flabbergasted and would say something to the King. So that is what the other servants did. And the King went off on the servant and threw him into prison to be tortured and until he could pay off his debt. Jesus ends the story by saying this is exactly how Jesus will treat you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

Think of it this way, any debt that you have owed to you is absolutely insignificant in relation and in comparison to the debt that God has forgiven you. If Jesus, while having been beaten, abused, whipped, scorned, and then hung on the cross, could, from the cross, utter these words, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”, how much more should we be able to forgive someone when they wrong us. And this isn’t to minimalize, negate, or say what someone has done to you is right, okay, or you should just forget about it. But none of us has been crucified, beaten, whipped, etc….

The truly repentant truly understand the radical nature of God’s grace and their own undeserving nature. Knowing this, how can we refuse to extend to others what he has give to us so freely? In other words, when we refuse to extend forgiveness to others, our own supposed repentance comes into question.

Let’s spend some time together discussing the implications of these texts on our everyday lives. Let’s discuss the ideas of debt forgiveness, forgiveness of sins, and the difficulty we face with applying these things to our lives.

1. What questions, ideas, thoughts, comments, insights, push back, etc... do you have regarding the text and the message? 2. What are your thoughts regarding the use of the word Debt and Debtors in the Lord's Prayer? How might these ideas be played out both in the world stage (nations, jubilee etc..) and also personally and communally? 3. Are there people in your life that God is calling you to forgive and if possible reconcile? What steps might you take in making this a reality? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what are we going to do about it?

Needing the Dough: Lord's Prayer Week 3

Below is the text from this past Sunday's message and the discussion questions as well. Would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, etc...

Today we continue our six week series looking at the Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6:9-13, which sits right in the middle of, what I believe, is one of the most significant teachings of Jesus, and one of the best descriptions of what life in the Kingdom of God is truly all about, the Sermon on the Mount.

Right smack in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, the crucial teaching about life in the Kingdom, is probably the most recognized prayer ever recorded in history, and a prayer that encompasses so much of a disciple’s life in the Kingdom of God, and what each of us should really be all about, and put our hope, time, energy, effort, and all of our life into. As I said last week it might be best called The Disciples prayer.

So 3 weeks ago we kicked it off with the first part of the Prayer, focusing on where all prayer should be focused on, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.” We spent time talking about the difficulty that we sometimes have in calling God Father, due to the struggles many of us have in our relationships with our earthly fathers. But we also talked about the great fact that because of God’s redemptive work through the life, death, and resurrection of His son Jesus, we are now adopted sons and daughters of our heavenly Father and we can literally cry out to him Daddy or Abba Father. We are adopted into a new family with our past wiped clean, and a new slate and a new inheritance, a Kingdom inheritance.

Last week we talked about the second part of the prayer, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We spent time looking at what can be called the Mission of Jesus that he lays out in Luke 4, which is based off of Isaiah 61. We talked about what it looks like when heaven touches down on earth, that it looks like Jesus, and as disciples and followers of Jesus, we are called to continue his work and his mission. And that by continuing his work of proclaiming good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s Favor, we are partnering with Jesus to see his Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. That is what it looks like when heaven touches down on earth.

Today we turn the corner from looking out to God and the world, to the part of the prayer where it turns internally into our own lives but at the same time even while it is internal, much like everything in the kingdom, it also has an external part of it as well. The 3rd part of the prayer where we focus on thoughts, and prayers on God and his provision for us. Let’s turn to Matthew 6:9-12 and look at the prayer again. “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ Jesus says we are to pray, Give us today our daily bread. With this part of the prayer we realize that our provision comes from Him and not from ourselves, our hard work, our “pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps” but they are a gift from our Heavenly Father. There are a few things that stand out with this part of the prayer, besides the fact that it’s about God’s provision for us. First it is daily bread, which is enough to get us through or as someone once said earlier in the Scriptures, give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” Secondly, the first word in this part of the prayer is give. Our daily bread, our sustenance, our provisions are a gift from God. We can’t earn them, we can’t work for them, and we can’t put God in our debt so that he has to give us our daily bread. No, it is a free gift because God the Father wants to provide the needs of his children. I find it that he provides all I need, not all I want or hope for. We provides enough for us. Like the Israelites in the wilderness where God would send enough manna for the people for the day, and if they tried to save it, it would get moldy. God provided enough daily bread for his people Israel, and he continues providing enough for his people today. This is where I believe the rubber hits the road, we want and have more than enough, but we worry and we sweat and we yell, scream, swear, and get angry that it isn’t enough. And so we focus on money and our wants and our materialism, and not primarily on the Kingdom of God. Jesus honestly cares a lot about our everyday things, and wants us to come to him in prayer and give over these things to him, and then we can live freely in the Kingdom, and not worry about stuff (easier said than done) but just have a simple trust that God knows and God will provide. But it’s also not just about our own needs, but the third thing I noticed is that I find it very interesting that this part of the prayer doesn’t say “Give me today my daily bread.” This prayer, as most of the Bible “commands” are meant more for communal application, than individual application. Also I believe that the community can be the answer to their own prayers and “give us today our daily bread.” This means that we can provide for each other in the community, and also others in the wider community and the world. So this is where this part ties in with the part we talked about last week. That bringing heaven to earth, means being the vessel of God to provide daily bread for others.

Apparently this was supposed to be what I was speaking on today because as you know 2013 hasn’t been a great year in relation to money for the Braught’s. Seems like money is like water through a sieve right now due to some stupid things, garage door, car, hospital visit, and this week our furnace went and needed to be replaced. So I worried, I yelled, I got angry, I got frustrated, Kim and I were on edge with each other, all because money became the focus, or more like the lack of money became the focus. And then I remembered what I was speaking on and the text that I am about to read, and realized that this message is for me, and if you hear something that applies to you (which I am sure we all have this issue) than I am thankful. I am preaching the gospel to myself this morning. I am preaching that when we focus on the Kingdom of God and seek it first, everything else will be taking care of. That doesn’t mean it will go according to your plan, the way you want it to go, or have exactly everything you could ever want. No, but we are invited to know a freedom from worry and anxiety that comes from undue concern for material things.

Let’s go a few verses later in Matthew chapter 6 and see what it might say about God and our daily bread. Matthew 6:31-34 says, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Honestly, this is probably once of the most challenging passages in the entire Bible to truly live out. Especially in the midst of the consumer culture that we find ourselves. But this is also where the first part of the Lord’s Prayer gives us some help. The first part places our identity squarely on being children of God, adopted sons and daughters and not on things that can be bought, sold, manufactured, and worn (or driven, or lived in, or etc..). When our identity is wrapped up in all the wrong things, all the material stuff, than we truly worry about looking a certain way, eating at the right places, living in the right place, having the right car, etc…. But when our identity is wrapped up in being adopted sons and daughters, and our focus is seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness, than God will provide the daily bread that we need. And tomorrow will worry about itself, instead of us taking on this worry that most of time we have absolutely no control over anyway.

So my question to each of us is this: What Kingdom are we living? Under whose rule and reign do we live? Do we live under our own rule and reign and seek out our own Kingdom? Trying to buy, consume, and wear an identity as King and Queen? Which then, by definition, we then believe we are the ones who work for the daily bread. We are the ones who worry, not about having enough, but worry about not having everything that everyone else has and what we want. We place our Kingdom ahead of the Kingdom of God and wonder why we are more stressed out, more unhappy, sleeping less, worrying more than those in other countries who have far less than we do but are far more well balanced and happy. Because I believe many of those people have learned what Kingdom they want to live for, the Kingdom of God. They have learned to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and God continues to provide. Or are you seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, praying each night “Give us this day our daily bread”, and trusting that he will indeed answer that cry of dependence of his children?

So let’s talk about the Lord’s Prayer, daily bread, God’s provisions, and which Kingdom we are seeking to put first in our lives. And let’s share stories of how we have seen God provide our daily bread lately.

Discussion Questions: 1. What are your insights into these passages of Scripture? What are your thoughts, comments, questions, etc.. about this part of the Lord’s Prayer? 2. Share an experience or a story when you have seen God provide for your “daily bread.” How did this experience deepen, challenge, convict, etc.. you and your faith? 3. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What is God saying to us and what should we do about it?

Bringing Heaven to Earth: Lord's Prayer Week 2

Below you'll find the second message in our series on the Lord's Prayer. The message was focusing on "Thy Kingdom Come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." And below the message is the questions that we discussed following the message. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, etc....

This morning we continue our series that we started last week looking at the Lord’s Prayer, or as one author that I have been reading called it, the Disciple’s Prayer. Over 6 weeks we will be breaking down the Lord’s Prayer into six sections and themes, that I believe are crucial for a disciple of Jesus to understand, live out, and apply to their missional context. Or to put it in another way, to genuinely pray this prayer and live a live according to its truth is to walk in the way of Christ.

Last week we took time to focus on the very first part of the prayer, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” and we talked about prayer needing to start with God the Father. But we also spent a lot of time talking about some of our struggles calling God by Father or even Dad. But in the end we talked and discussed most about the love of our Father in that he adopted us as sons and daughters. And how this should change the way we interact with not only Him but with all people, whether they are followers of Jesus or not, because in a way we are all children of God.

Today we are going to cover probably my most favorite part of the Lord’s Prayer, the second part. And in covering this part, we will be taking time to dialogue and discuss these provocative questions, “What would it be like if Heaven touched down on Planet Earth? What would happen? What would be different? And how are we called to live out that reality right now.”

So let’s turn to Matthew 6:9-13 where we find one version of the Lord’s Prayer. Mathew 6:9-13 are the words of Christ himself and he says this, “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

So we today we are focusing and unpacking this part of the prayer, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We probably could have chosen to do this one in two parts talking about what the Kingdom of God is, and his will and also what it looks like when heaven comes to earth. But I truly believe that the Kingdom of God is what happens when heaven touches down on earth. And believe it or not, that question, “What does it look like when heaven touches down on earth?” has actually been answered for us, and the answer is in the person and work of Jesus, and by definition what we are then called to do and be about. This declaration that Jesus is making for his Kingdom is one that is affirming a distinct future hope. It is a declaration that God will, in human history, fulfill his covenant promises and establish his kingdom in fullness. Jesus is promising that the blessed kingdom of Shalom (Peace) is breaking through, if only in part, into the world here and now. So let’s take some time exploring the idea of the Kingdom of God and what our role in the Kingdom is. And the best place I believe to find out our role is to look at what people have called Jesus Manifesto or his mission statement for his ministry on earth. Let’s turn together to Luke 4:16-21 and see what it might say to us in relation to bringing heaven to earth and living out his will and his Kingdom.

“He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

So as I mentioned before this is kind of like Jesus mission statement for his ministry. And I believe by definition, if we are followers of Jesus, then in some way this should also be what we are all about as well. This is what I believe it looks like when heaven touches down on earth. This is how Jesus lived his life, and this is how we are to also live out the Kingdom of God here and now. As Luke 17:20-21 says, “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” The Kingdom of God is in our midst when we live out what we are called to do, which is live in such a way that the DNA of Jesus is lived, breathed, and spread into the world. But what is the DNA of the Kingdom or what is the mission of Jesus? He spells it out in verses 18-19. His mission was to and is to heal the fivefold damage that sin has brought. He did this in such a way that it wasn’t just spiritual healing but physical as well, and we are called to the same thing, to heal spiritually and physically.

So Jesus was about preaching the gospel to the poor. Sin impoverishes and the Messiah will bring good news to the poor. Jesus had and has a soft place in his heart for the poor. After all just a few verses earlier in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” So if Jesus was about bringing good news to the poor, one way that heaven comes to earth, is when followers of Jesus bring good news to the poor. Now this doesn’t just mean preaching to the poor about Jesus (though this includes that) but means figuring out what good news is for the poor and then when you find it out, acting upon that. Good news changes when you take time to listen first and you’ll then know what next steps to be undertaken. If we are truly the followers of Jesus, then the poor in our world should hold a special placed in our hearts and we should work to bring good news to them (that means taking care of their physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and even economic needs). Jesus mission was also to heal the brokenhearted. Sin breaks hearts and the Messiah has good news for the brokenhearted. Think about the stories of loss and pain because of disease, sickness, and death that Jesus came upon in his ministry. Think about his ministry to these individuals, their families and ultimately their communities brought good news to the brokenhearted. If we are to see heaven come to earth, we need to work to heal the brokenhearted. Whether that means through praying for them, spending time just being with him (like how the 3 friends of Job did when they spent the first 7 days with him without saying a word), or listening to them to discern what would heal their broken heart (if anything…because we all know there are things that no matter what, only Jesus and Heaven can heal).

Next in the mission of Jesus is to proclaim liberty for the captives. Sin makes people captive and enslaves them and the Messiah has come to set them free. Jesus set us free from the chains of death, sin, evil, and Satan but all too often we all too often then choose to put the chains back on ourselves. His life, death, and resurrection has freed us from those things and we don’t need to go running back to them and be enslaved to them anymore. And as a part of bringing heaven to earth, followers of Jesus need to proclaim liberty for the captives. I believe that means both spiritually and physically. We need to proclaim the freedom that comes from giving your life to Jesus, but we also have to be on the forefront of working to end the issues of Human Trafficking, and Slavery, because believe it or not there are more slaves now in our world than ever before. There are between 14,500-17,000 humans trafficked in the US each year. And Human Trafficking is a 15.5 billion dollar industry. These numbers should not be and is an area which I feel strongly about, that followers of Jesus, who should work towards heaven coming to earth, should fight this, and there are many who are. I believe that this is one concrete thing that Veritas can be involved in and work specifically with. Jesus was also about bringing recovery of sight to the blind. Sin blinds and Jesus came to heal people from blindness. In this ministry, he healed people from both their physical and their spiritual blindness. Part of bringing heaven to earth includes working on bring sight to the blind. And just like Jesus this means spiritual blindness and physical blindness. Whether that means going to other countries with doctor’s and doing eye examinations, collecting eye glasses for people who need them, or sharing the gospel of Jesus and praying that the Holy Spirit will open the eyes of those you share with. And lastly Jesus worked at liberation of those who were oppressed. Sin oppresses its victims and He came to bring liberty to the oppressed. We also need to work for the liberation of the oppressed in our world. Oppression takes many forms including religious oppression (of all kind and not just Christian oppression), gender oppression (many women in our world are the victims of various forms of oppression- economic, domestic violence, spiritual, etc...), and ethnic oppression (based on ethnicity, etc...) Also we need to work for the liberation of the spiritually oppressed, those who need to experience the freedom that Christ came to give. The freedom from the oppression of the evil one. Only when oppression finally ceases will heaven fully come to earth. But we need to continue working for freedom for the oppressed, so that heaven begins to come to earth. So let’s talk more about what it looks like when heaven touches down on earth, what God is already doing, what he wants to do and how God might be calling Veritas to partner with him in the building of his Kingdom

1. Thoughts, comments, insights, questions, etc. regarding the message and the Scriptures? 2. What does it look like to you when Heaven touches down on earth? Tell a story when you have been a part of or seen heaven touching down on earth. 3. What is God already doing in our community/world? What does God want to do in our community/world? 4. How might God use Veritas and each of us in what he is already doing in the world and what he wants to do in the world? How can we help bring heaven to earth?

Whose Your Daddy? Lord's Prayer Week 1

Below is the text for my message from yesterday's gathering focusing on the first part of the Lord's Prayer. Below the message is the discussion questions that we used for after the message to flush out the application in a deeper way. Today we begin a six week series looking at what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. We’ll break down the prayer into six parts with six different themes and we’ll seek to apply those themes to our lives as followers of Jesus both on an individual level but also a corporate level. We’ll be taking a look at the prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 and using other Scriptures throughout the six weeks to further explore the themes found in the prayer.

But before we get into the first part of the prayer, we need to look at the overall context of the passage in which the Lord’s Prayer sits. Matthew 5-7 is what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, and includes some of Jesus most foundational teachings on what it looks like to live in the Kingdom of God and the values that are a part of life in the Kingdom. And so Matthew 6 starts off by talking about giving to the needy and also about prayer. But the thing that underlies both themes is that giving to the needy and prayer shouldn’t be about getting and gaining recognition for these acts of Kingdom life. Jesus is contrasting the life of the Pharisees with what life in the Kingdom of God is all about. And so what we find in the Lord’s Prayer, as far as the themes that we will be exploring, ideas that are crucial to life lived with Jesus and life in the Kingdom.

And so in this part of Matthew 6 we see Jesus again contrasting two types of prayer, one type of prayer that is prayed by Pharisee’s who want recognition and honor from people, and one type of prayer that is about God primarily and also about life in the Kingdom of God. And so with that context for the Lord’s Prayer, that it is about life in the Kingdom, let’s turn to the prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 and we’ll read the entire passage and then focus our energy today on the first verse, verse 9.

“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’” So we will be focusing on “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” And before we jump into this message too much farther, I realize that this might be a difficult theme to talk about, the Fatherhood of God, due to perceptions and relationships with our earthly Father’s. I know that some of us have really difficult and strained relationships with our earthly Fathers, and that it might be a struggle to call God our Father. But my prayer today is that each of us will come to a place realizing that God is the perfect Father, and no matter what your relationship is with your earthly father, that you can call out to our Heavenly Father, and even move beyond calling him Father to calling him Abba…which means Daddy or Dad. And that you will then rest in the knowledge that not only is God your dad, or father but that you are an adopted child of God, and that there is nothing you can do to make God love you anymore and there is nothing you can do to make God love you any less. He loves you fully as his adopted son or daughter. You are a son or daughter of the King of the Universe. And so I pray that this message and our discussion today can redeem, even in a small way, the term Father (Dad) for you and that you can begin to pray, not to God, Lord, etc… but to cry out (especially in hard times, and struggles) to Dad/Abba/Father. With that in mind let’s turn to further explore the idea of God being Father and also our role as adopted sons and daughters of the Father.

In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus begins where all prayer should be focused, on the true focus of prayer, God himself. I don’t know about you but a lot of the time it seems like my prayers are not about God and for his glory. Instead they are about me and my glory and happiness. “God if you will only……” Here Jesus is placing our focus during prayer squarely on God the Father. This, according to Jesus, is the right way to pray. Acknowledging that God is Father and also acknowledging that he is our Father in heaven which means he is holy and full of glory. And so as we pray we call out to our Father in heaven, which would then make us children, sons and daughter’s of God. And living as a child of God should mean an intimate, joyful relationship with God- not like the bondage and fear by the law. As a child of God we can have a relationship with God so close that we can cry out “Abba/Daddy/Father”. Let’s look at some other Scriptures throughout the New Testament that unpacks what it means to be children of the Father and a metaphor that the writers of Scriptures give as we live out our roles as children of God. The first Scripture we can look at the talks about the Fatherhood of God and our role as sons and daughters is found in Romans 8:15 which says, “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” Here the Apostle Paul is contrasting the status of slaves versus sons. The status of a slave was actually no status at all. Slaves lived in fear, had really no socio-economic status, and definitely weren’t loved by the Father of the household. But the son of the Father, had his Father’s status (or would) and was loved by the Father. Even if that son was an adopted son. In the Roman world of the 1st century an adopted son was a son deliberately chosen by his adoptive Father to perpetuate his name and inherit his estate; he was in no way inferior in status to a son born in the ordinary course of heritage. Also under Roman adoption the life and status of the adopted child changed completely. The adopted son lost all rights in his old family and gained all new rights in this new family. The old life of the adopted son was completely wiped out, with all debts being cancelled, with nothing from his past counting against him anymore. Sound exactly what happens when we become adopted sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. Followers of Jesus are called to perpetuate the name of the Father, inherit his estate called the Kingdom of God, our status gets radically changed, we gain all new rights, our old life is wiped away, and all our debts are cancelled with nothing from our past counting against us anymore. When we become followers of Jesus we become adopted sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. This concept that our Heavenly Father has adopted us as full children of God is all throughout the Scriptures and the Apostle Paul talks a lot about it not only in Romans but also in Galatians 4:4-7 which says, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” The Apostle Paul in verse 4 is using language of the Roman legal world when he refers to adoption to sonship which means full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture. You and I are sons of our Heavenly Father all due to Jesus, as it says in verse 4, that “God sent his Son to redeem those under the law so that we would receive adoption to sonship/daughtership. And so we have been redeem from slavery to sin, death, and Satan, and made adopted sons and daughters. And because we have moved from slave to son/daughter we are able to cry out in prayer, Abba (Daddy) Father. And because we are sons and daughters of God, we have access to the same intimacy with God the Father that God the Son, Jesus Christ had. Jesus addressed God the Father as "Daddy" when He prayed, Abba, Father as recorded in Mark 14:36. And Jesus is telling us the very same thing in the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer that we can address and have the same intimacy with our Father as he has with His Father.

There is one other Scriptures that I want to briefly touch on that, if you haven’t heard it by now, deal with the fact that we have a loving heavenly Father who has adopted us as his own and because of that adoption and love, we can call him Abba. That Scripture is 1 John 3:1, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” We are children of His not because of anything that we are, have done, or ever could do. We are adopted sons and daughters of our Father because of what it says in this verse, because of the love that he has lavished on us. It’s because of him, his love, his sending Jesus, his Kingdom, his vision, and his redemption that we can stand before him and even pray the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s because of him that we can even cry out or utter those words, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

So let’s spend time unpacking what it looks like to live as adopted sons and daughters of our Abba Daddy in Heaven. Let’s honestly confront the struggles that we have in even calling him that. Let’s talk about our prayer life and how this part of the Lord’s Prayer speaks to us. And let’s look at what it might look like in regards to our mission as followers of Jesus and our life in the Kingdom.

1. What thoughts, comments, questions, insights, push back, etc... do you have regarding the message and/or Scripture? 2. Do you find it difficult to pray using Father in your prayers? If so, why is that? How can the term Father be redeemed for you? 3. What does it mean to you to know that you are an adopted child of God? How might this knowledge play out in terms of our missional engagement with the world? 4. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it? What do you think God is saying to us as a community and what should we do about it?

Jesus Wardrobe and Advent

Last Sunday for our gathering I had asked a few artists, musicians and writers to be involved in our worship gathering to give the gathering a more creative flair. And the art, music and words that were created were awe-inspiring. I love that our community is full of creatives who write, draw, paint, play music, and live out God's creative gifts that has been given to them. One of the people who had a hand in the gathering is a writer and I asked her to write two pieces; one reflecting on Love All (which was the theme for the day) and one reflecting on Advent (and ending our gathering and our Advent Conspiracy series) After she was finished with the pieces, I asked if I could share them on the blog and she has graciously allowed me to repost them here. So I share them with you and may them bless you as they have been a blessing not only to me but our entire Veritas community.

Jesus Wardrobe i want to wear love. i find that so insanely beautiful, that i want it that bad. i want balance of course but if i could pick one thing out to wear each day it would be love. that kind of love that christ wore, that drove out all of that fear in us. i want that, i don't know if i can own it but i want to borrow it, i want to try it on as much as i can. until it becomes natural. so natural that it just kinda fits on me, i dont even need to try anymore. because when you are able to wear that love, things start to come easily, almost like you can just throw on a scarf to top your outfit off, or a subtle bracelet. touch it off with some compassion or even some of that kindness. i believe that as we grow and start to fit into the wardrobe God has made us, we can start to understand Him. It is like that favorite shirt that you own and can't get enough of it, it makes you look great. Just imagine putting Jesus's love on every morning. Imagine what kind of glow you would have, what kind of overflowing passion to serve the person beside you. And the best part of it is that we just need to ask. I think i get so used to complaining, and never seem to look down and see what He had dressed me in today. i want that love. i want to dress in it, sleep in it, walk in it and talk in it.

you know i feel in the all of everything, the center of it is love.

Advent advent season seems to come and go, and as it goes we anxiously wait for the true gift of it all. for some of us we want to be able to put that gift into a box, in a nice snowman bag or even on a plastic card. how easily it is to twist a bow around it, stick a to and from tag on and place it under the tree. and by christmas day, we find ourselves asking, where did advent go?

our eyes turn to the tree and we see the presents spilling over the floor, knowing that as we unwrap them one by one. none of them will hold the joy of advent. Because we are so busy wrapping up advent, I want us to unwrap. I want us to see it unraveling before our own eyes. Get on your hands and kness, and take that red bow off of that christmas box,

how as we wait, we find ourselves kneeling, and as the days of advent go on, the christmas box seems lighter and lighter even if it was just that red bow that was removed.

As you wait for the next week to remove the wrapping paper, it seems to come off smoothly, you find it pointless to buy new wrapping paper when this kind fits perfectly fine on any christmas box. as you carry your naked christmas box around all you want to do is to show people, telling them you can’t wait to see what is inside. how you want them to hold the same thing you have in your very hands. how eager you are to tell them what is to come!

as the last week passes, you wonder what this could be. what could this simple white Christmas box hold? and when that day arrives, you rip open that christmas box and thin air appears from the inside of it. your still, and there is just that pure silence. and somehow you find yourself on your knees again, your hands empty and the only thing that you feel is that presence filling your heart.

so, when it comes to unwrapping your gift, what is in the inside of yours?

Love All: Week 4 of Advent Conspiracy

This art above was created by an artist during our worship gathering yesterday. The art ties together all 4 tenants for the Advent Conspiracy (Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All).

Below is the message from yesterday and also the discussion questions that we spent time discussing following the message.

Today we have come to the end of our Advent series and we officially wrap up Advent tomorrow night. Over the last 4 weeks we have been exploring this conspiracy called advent. Hopefully our discussions have inspired, challenged, convicted, and push you towards relooking at the subversive nature of this season and how we have completely missed the point about Christmas in our world.

When we started Advent Conspiracy at the beginning of Advent we looked at the first of the 4 tenant of the Advent Conspiracy movement, that of worship fully. All too often, as I mentioned last week, our worship doesn’t start with Jesus, but with stuff. Our worship isn’t a holistic part of our life, consumerism becomes the defacto behavior, and the mall becomes our church. But Advent begins and ends with the Christ Child born 2,000 years ago.

The second tenant we spend time unpacking together was the tenant of Spending Less. I don’t know about you but I was blown away by the statistic that every year American’s spend 450 billion on Christmas. I also heard that the average American family spends 750-1000 dollars on Christmas. So we talked about what would happen if we just spent less, maybe 1 gift less than this past year, and also taking some of the money that we would spend on ourselves and giving it to others to bless them. We also talked about 2 types of yokes- the yoke of Christmas (or we could say the yoke consumerism) versus the yoke of Christ.

Last week we covered the 3rd tenant of Advent Conspiracy, which at first look seems to go contrary to the 2nd tenant. We covered the tenant of Giving More. Giving more not in terms of Presents, but of presence. We talked about 4 parts of the Incarnation, FOR, WITH, ONE OF, and IN and how we are called to the same thing. That we, as followers of Jesus, are to incarnate him in the world by being FOR people, WITH people, ONE OF people, and finally the DNA that is within us from Jesus, will be IN people.

So this week we are covering the 4th and final tenant of the Advent Conspiracy, that of Love All. And my hope and prayer is that we will see the familiar story of the birth of Jesus in a brand new way. And that as we unpack it together it will regain its subversive, radical, message and will push us out into the world to LOVE ALL, and get back to what we as followers of Jesus should be all about. ‘

To do this we will look at the second account of the birth of Jesus in the New Testament. So let’s look at Luke 2:1-7 and see what we can learn about this racial call and tenant to LOVE ALL. Luke 2:1-7 says this, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” This story of the sleeping baby told all of this land and the world has become all often the symbol of the status quo- a safe, sanitized, twenty-first century savior. But it is time to take a closer look at the stories of Jesus birth, reading them with Israel’s history wrapped around the newborn baby rather than with our sugar-coated sentimentality. Only then will we truly understand that the Christmas story is a radical message that sets the scene for all that is to come from the most challenging and controversial figure of all time.

I was doing some research this week about the cultural setting and the historical setting in which this story took place, and I was totally blown away by a description of the world into which Jesus was born. I want to read it to you, as it, to me, didn’t sound too different than the world that you and I live in. “The lusty peninsula was worn out with twenty years of civil war. Its farms had been neglected, its towns had been sacked or besieged, and much of its wealth had been stolen or destroyed. Administration and protection had broken down; robbers made every street unsafe at night; highwaymen roamed the roads, kidnapped travelers, and sold them into slavery. Trade diminished, investment stood still, interest rates soared, and property values fell. Morals, which had been loosened by riches and luxury, had not been improved by destitution and chaos, for few conditions are more demoralizing than poverty that comes after wealth. Rome was full of men who had lost their economic footing and then their moral stability: soldiers who had tasted adventure and had learned to kill; citizens who had seen their savings consumed in the taxes and inflation of war and waited vacuously for some returning tide to life them back to affluence; women dizzy with freedom, multiplying divorces, abortions, and adulteries." (Durant) Society was ripe for deliverance, peace, and hope and many were looking at someone who was called the Son of God, and this person was not Jesus but Caesar Augustus. People were looking with hope at the power, might, and strength of Rome to deliver peace. It is into this world that the true Prince of Peace would be born. God came to the poor- or in other words, all of us. Jesus gave up the glory of heaven to be born into a sin-scarred world that glorious night in Bethlehem, every day of his life and in the deadly pain of the cross. Jesus became poor for our sake. Jesus entered our poverty so we would no longer be poor. The priceless gift of a restored relationship with God and others is now offered to those who could never afford it. The outrageous wealth of his righteousness is credited to those who don’t deserve it, to those who are poor, that is good news.

Jesus coming into the world they way he did, proves the fact that he LOVED ALL. He didn’t come just for the rich, privileged few. He came to LOVE ALL. In fact, a great case can be made that he came more for the poor, needy, and oppressed than any others. You see Jesus himself was poor. He chose to be born into the poverty of a family struggling beneath the heel of Imperial Rome. Writer Scott Bessenecher suggests that “the very first statement that Jesus ever voiced about his concern for the poor, oppressed and marginalized people was when he cried out as one of them- eyes tight, mouth open wide, wailing, kicking. It was one of the most profound acts of solidarity with the poor he could make. When God voted with his birth, he voted for the poor. He voted to LOVE ALL.

We see in the stories of Jesus’ birth, particularly in Luke, the first glimpses of what will become a central aspect of the Kingdom of God, status reversal. With the birth of Jesus, the sun had risen on a new Kingdom of which the poor would become first-class citizens. The King of this Kingdom would love all. We see this fact that Jesus came for all, to LOVE ALL in two other narratives tied to his early life. Right after the text we just read, comes the story of the Shepherds encounters with the Angels. We talked about the fact that Shepherds were probably one of the least respected people in all of Israel. They were considered unclean by the religious elite, because of their duty and their inability to go to the temple and get cleansed. Their testimony wasn’t valid in a court of law. And yet God chose these unclean, and unreliable to spread the news of the birth of the Christ child, the true Savior and Prince or Peace. It reminds me of the text in 1 Corinthians 1:26-28, “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,”

The other narrative related to the Infancy stories of Jesus is told in Matthew 2 about the Magi who came to visit the Christ Child. The star appeared to them, and they traveled to worship the new born King. These wise men were gentiles, and so were probably not looked on kindly by the religious Jews. But Epiphany Sunday is where we celebrate the revelation of God the Son in Jesus Christ and his breaking down the dividing wall between Jesus and Gentile, right at his birth.

His birth to poor parents, in an out of the way corner of the empire, not born to privilege and wealth, God’s choosing a bunch of Shepherds to reveal the birth of his Son, and having Gentle wise man appear to worship, and give him gifts, all point to fact that Jesus truly was about the tenant of LOVE ALL. God’s coming Kingdom is about inclusion. But what does this all have to do with today? If we follow Jesus, and seek to be like him, how do we follow him to LOVE ALL. And why in our world are Christians known more for what they are against than what they are for (It seems like we miss this tenant to LOVE ALL, and only love those who agree with us)? Let’s dialogue around these questions and come up with some concrete ideas of LOVING ALL, not only in this Advent Season, but all year long.

1. What are your thoughts, comments, insights, questions about LOVE ALL? 2. If you were to grade the church on this tenant of the Advent Conspiracy how would the church fare? If the coming Kingdom of God is about inclusion and LOVING ALL, how can we improve our grade? 3. Consider the dirty manger, the seemingly indifferent community of Bethlehem, the not-too-impressive first visitors after Jesus’ birth, and the temple sacrifice of two doves or pigeons, all these are subtle clues that Jesus was born into poverty. Imagine reading this passage (Luke 2:1-24) through the eyes of someone lacking the same resources as you. How might reading it this way change the way we worship this Christmas? 4. If our community were to “LOVE ALL” this Advent Season (and all year round), what would that look like? 5. What is God saying to you through this message and series and what are you going to do about it? What do you think God is saying to us through this message and series and what should we do about it?